But the swift accession of joy may come in another way, from the sudden transformation of one’s world, from the arrival of some good thing which is at once unexpected and big enough to lift us to a higher level of happiness. With children and savages the sight of a new and pretty toy is sometimes enough to effect this. The charming bauble will so fill sense and soul that the joy of living leaps to a {73} higher plane and bursts into a peal of mirth. The unexpected sound of the father’s voice at the end of a long day devoted to the things of the nursery was, we are told, enough to evoke a shout of laughter in a small American boy: it sufficed to bring back to the little fellow’s consciousness another and a glorious world. We older folk have, for the greater part, lost the capacity of simply greeting delightful things in this way, a greeting in which there is no thought either of their meaning or of their interest for us. Yet we may meet the unexpected coming of friends with something of the child’s simplicity of attitude. It is hard not to smile on suddenly seeing a friend in a crowded London street: hard to keep the smile from swelling into a laugh, if the friend has been supposed at the moment of encounter to be many miles away. Some of us, indeed, may retain the child’s capacity of laughing with a joyous wonder at a brilliant explosion of fireworks.
It remains to account for the persistent fit of laughter which frequently accompanies a prolonged gladness. Does not the fact that the child and the natural man, when taken with the mood of mirth, go on venting their good spirits in renewed peals tell against our theory that the outburst is caused by an accession of joy?
In order to answer this we must look a little more closely at this so-called persistent laughter. The language of observers of unsophisticated human nature is sadly wanting in precision here. When, for example, we are told by travellers that certain savages are always laughing, we know that we are not to take the statement literally. It means only what it means when a mother tells her visitor that her rogue of a boy is for ever laughing and shouting; that under certain favourable conditions the laughing fit comes readily and persists longer than usual. In a lasting {74} mood of jollity we are all strongly inclined to laugh, and need very little to call forth a long outburst.
This preternaturally large output of laughter during a prolonged state of high spirits finds its explanation in part in a kind of physiological inertia, the tendency to go on repeating movements when once these are started. The protracted iteration of laughter in a child is closely analogous to that of his half-unconscious singing to himself. This tendency of movements to perpetuate themselves in a mechanical way probably accounts for the lengthening of the single outburst in the case of a child violently seized with mirth. As mothers know, this reduction of laughter to a mechanical iteration of movement is apt to continue beyond the limits of fatigue and to bring on such unpleasant effects as “hiccup”. It is probable, too, that the tendency during a prolonged state of mirth to recommence laughing after a short pause is referrible to a like cause: the physiological springs of the movements being once set going, the explosive fit tends to renew itself.
Discounting this effect of physiological inertia, we seem to find that in these periods of prolonged high spirits laughter retains its fundamental character as a comparatively short process which occurs intermittently. Where the laughing is not merely a trick played off by the bodily mechanism, but holds a germ of mind in the shape of a happy consciousness, it has its large and significant pauses.
If this is so, it seems reasonable to suppose that the mental antecedent which brings on some new explosion is analogous to the sense of “sudden glory” which accounts for the single joyous peal. Owing to the exceptionally strong disposition to laugh during such a period, the antecedent feeling need not be a powerful one, a very slight {75} momentary increase of the joyous tone sufficing to give a fresh start to the muscles.
It is not difficult to suggest possible sources of such slight sudden augmentations of the happy feeling-tone. No prolonged state of consciousness is, strictly speaking, of one uniform colour; in the boisterous merriment of an old-fashioned dinner-party there were alternations of tone, brilliant moments following others of comparative dulness. The course of the bodily sensations in these prolonged states of joy is in itself a series of changes, involving a sequence of exaltations upon relative depressions of the “vital sense”. The course of the presentations to eye and to ear in such a festive mood must be subject to like fluctuations in respect of their action upon the feeling-tone; and the same applies to the flow of ideas which can find a place in the mind when thus affected. Lastly, it must not be forgotten that the movements of attention would of themselves always secure a certain rise and fall of enjoyment. We all know how, when we are gladdened by some new and unexpected happiness, the mind after a short digression returns to the delightful theme, and how, as a result of this return, a new wave of joyous feeling seems to inundate the spirit.
There seems much, then, to be said for the hypothesis that all varieties of joyous laughter (when not reduced to a mechanical form) are excited by something in the nature of a sudden accession of pleasurable consciousness. Where the laugh is a new thing, unprepared for by a previous mood of hilarity, this rise of the spirits will, as we shall see later, probably involve a transition from a mental state which was relatively depressed. Where, on the other hand, a joyous mood prolongs itself, all that seems needed for re-exciting the movements of laughter (provided that the muscular {76} energies are equal to the explosion) is the sudden increase by an appreciable quantity of the pleasurable tone of the consciousness.
We may further illustrate and verify this generalisation respecting the causes of joyous laughter by an examination of some of the more familiar circumstances in which this is wont to occur. Here we shall of course be dealing with the early and unsophisticated mind. Properly drilled “grown-ups” but rarely exhibit the phenomenon in its full intensity.
(a) It is a matter of common observation that joyous laughter is a frequent concomitant of the play-attitude, especially at its first resumption. We have already found this illustrated in the laughter of “happy boys” just liberated from school. Here the conditions indicated, a relief from restraint and a sudden expansion of joyous activity, are patent to all.